


Unfurled

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 15:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14772461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: A hundred flags flying in a field. A sight Noctis never thought he would live to see. The world celebrates freedom from tyranny, yet Noctis still waits to feel that freedom for himself. He waits for Nyx to make it all worth it.





	Unfurled

**Author's Note:**

> for an anonymous prompt fill!

“You’re growing your hair out?”

“Do you not like it?”

Noctis fingered the lanky ends of hair tickling his chin. He hadn’t noticed just how long it had really gotten. Growing it out had not been a conscious decision, but he could never tell Nyx why. He could never tell him how little he cared about his own appearance when he wasn’t there to make an effort for.

He didn’t blame him, of course he didn’t. None of this was either of their faults. But no matter how self-deprecating he tried to phrase it, the truth of something as inconsequential as the length of his hair wouldn’t be fair to Nyx. He wouldn’t guilt him like that.

“There’s not a strand of hair on your head that I don’t like,” Nyx chuckled. “No matter how you choose to wear it.”

It wasn’t a choice. He wasn’t even sure he liked the way it looked, now that he took notice of it in the projection of his webcam. He hadn’t really _seen_ it before. He merely woke up one morning, blinked the sleepless night from his eyes in the bathroom mirror, and, _oh, that’s different… Well, alright then. Coffee._

It was so easy to ignore beneath how much more he had to worry about. That was all he could see in it; the length of his hair measuring the length of time wasted in the Council chambers every day. It made him look older than his age. It made him look like his father. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“It looks good, Noct,” Nyx assured him, mistaking his sullen look for a slight against his vanity. “Keep growing it long like that, and maybe you could fit in some braids.”

“Maybe you can. When you come home.”

Noctis bit his tongue too late, wincing like the words were a needle poking into his arm. He didn’t mean to say things like that. It made him sound like he was rushing Nyx – as if he had any control over when he could come back. But it was growing harder and harder to school his patience the longer the peace proceedings dragged on without resolution.

It was down to him and his father, and they were so damn close. If Niflheim would only bend an inch, if they would just meet Lucis one step more than halfway, then they could start pulling their forces from the captive territories. If they could just get ink to paper, maybe he could see Nyx even sooner. He could smell him, feel him, and see him standing, breathing, right in front of him. Where he could reach out and touch skin and know that he was warm and safe and real.

It was harder to convince himself with a hundred miles and a tablet screen between them. It was hard to know if he was warm within the barren backdrop of canvas tents and lumpy cots and clay earth falling away towards black smoke on the horizon. It was hard to know if he was safe when one half of his chin was yellow with bruises and his brow was cut through with a new pink scar.

It was hard to know he was real when Noctis could count the pixels that comprised his face if he brought him close enough to his own, trying to feel him through the leagues of space between.

“I’ll think up some ideas then,” Nyx promised, trying to soften the silence. He rubbed the end of one of his braids between thumb and forefinger. Noctis tried to convince himself that he didn’t see faint strands of silver in the intricate folds.

“I’ll keep thinking up ideas to make this end,” Noctis promised in return.

Nyx smiled like it didn’t bother him, but fewer things got under his skin more than the Empire’s refusal to surrender – like they’d forced every other nation on Eos to do before it. Gods forbid they taste even a drop of their own medicine, show even an _ounce_ of humility in these treaties meant to chasten _every_ nations’ part in the war.

“Just do what you have to for your people, Noct. If I can wait for nothing else, I can wait for Lucis.”

_I don’t know if I can_.

Noctis refused to admit that particularly selfish thought out loud. He and Nyx were not the only sufferers in this war.  Of course he knew that. Thousands of families, of friends, of lovers just like them, had been waiting just as long – if not longer – than they had to be together again.

He was not the only man holding his breath every time he waited for the signals to connect. He was just the only man that couldn’t speak a single dissenting word about it.

“Don’t worry,” Nyx said. “We’ve made it this long. Just have to make it one more day.”

“And one more after that,” Noctis mumbled, glaring at a blank point past the tablet screen and imagining the Emperor’s face crackling and burning like a shriveled piece of bacon in hot oil.

“Just take a breath, Noct. Be a king. Your father needs you. And I’ll be right here.”

“But I want you to be _here_.”

Noctis let his hand fall to the empty place on the pillow beside his head. It felt like ice. There used to be a matching impression sunken into the pillow case. There used to be a familiar scent distinguishing the little dip from the one Noctis left on the other side. Warmth used to cling to the old linen like his own arms around Nyx’s chest, insisting that he not get up for work on any given morning.

Nyx sighed on the other side of the country, the sound of his breath coming through like static. Noctis tried to remember what it felt like, washing over his face… He couldn’t. Nyx rested a hand on the flat space beside his own head. Noctis lifted his little finger against the screen, touching the side of Nyx’s hand. Nyx matched him. The pixels parted and purpled around them.

“I’ll be home soon,” Nyx whispered. “I mean it this time.”

“Don’t make promises that I can’t keep for you.”

It wasn’t up to Nyx. No matter his strength, or his skill, or his smirk, that could divest the most stubborn scriptures of social piety of their trappings, he wasn’t the one with every eye from here to Tenebrae turned towards him. He wasn’t the one behind the table, being given page after page after page of political mock-ups to pick through, searching for deceit in the “best interests” posed by Niflheim.

“You’re wiser than you think, Noct. You’ll find a way. No matter how long it takes.”

“Hasn’t it taken long enough?”

“Remember what your dad said. ‘Walk tall.’ Walk tall enough that you’re the one casting the shadow, not them. Let them feel what it’s like to be left in the dark. Make them a little afraid if you have to. Make them see you.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Noctis laughed.

“Well, I guess I do have a bit more experience in the field of being in awe of you.”

Noctis smiled. He drew a finger along the line of Nyx’s jaw. Nyx followed his own line too, one that Noctis couldn’t see or feel in the distance which separated them. It just looked like he was drawing invisible patterns through the air. Like he was trying to touch a ghost.

“I should let you sleep. I know you’re not getting enough of it,” Nyx murmured, trying to convince himself to end the call more than he tried to say good night.

Noctis sighed, breath strained through his nose as he swallowed around the hard plea to not hang up, not to leave him alone with his panicking thoughts for another night more. “It’s going to be a long day,” he bargained with himself instead. “I guess I should try at least.”

“I can stay on until you fall asleep.”

“I never will if you do.”

“Is my handsome face really so distracting?”

Noctis traced the curve of his smirk against the screen. “You’re absolutely that distracting and you know it.”

Nyx kept smiling, persistently distracting. So distracting that both of them forgot to end the call, the tablet screens shutting down and cutting the signal long after they’d both fallen asleep with their faces pressed to the screens.

* * *

It still felt like it wasn’t real.

Even after he read the signature one hundred times, even after he ran his fingers over the sharp, dried script a hundred times more, he still couldn’t believe it.

He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. He was waiting for the ink to vanish like a photograph exposed to the sun too soon. He was waiting for a knife to slip from the Emperor’s sleeve as he shook his father’s hand in front of a hundred cameras, with millions of eyes trained through the digital waves, looking for the exact same thing.

He still couldn’t believe it, even as his father stood tall and unstabbed beside him, and all the worlds’ flags unfurled across the fields of witnesses cascading from the steps of the Citadel. Insomnia roared with the praise of history around him, decades of grief and strife gusting up into the atmosphere to burn away beneath the new dawn.

It was impossible. He never thought he’d live to see it, let alone beside his father. Not after generations of his family had lived and died under the conquests of Niflheim. And yet, here he stood, unashamedly gripping his father’s hand like when he was ten, the both of them trying not to cry where their enemies could see… _Former_ enemies. No longer invaders. Neighbors, now.

It was so hard to wrap his head around. Even as the days passed, and more and more borders were set free. Even as he was reunited with friends he never expected to see in person again, squeezed so tight in the arms of Lunafreya that he feared his head might pop off.

They still had a long way to go, of course. They still had to be careful in places, still had bridges to rebuild, foundations to repair between ruined nations, eager to heal from lifetimes of devastation.

It couldn’t all be fixed in a day. And likewise, he couldn’t command every single soldier to leave their posts and come back home in a single day, either. It was a trickle, rather than a rush. Regis assured him that it was progress. Little by little, every footstep through the gates of Insomnia was a victory, no matter how small.

It was hard to be patient, even with the progress. Even though he knew he should be grateful for the tiniest of steps, and that he shouldn’t take a single one for granted, the only way he would know that it was truly over was when Nyx finally came home.

Though he solaced himself with the friends that he had at hand, sloughing away years of stress over tea with the Fleurets, leaving bruises on Gladio’s arm from punching him so hard with affection, and collapsing into couch cushions with Prompto to talk for days at a time about all that they had missed in the overlong scramble to end the war, he still ached for that one last piece.

“Soon, Noct,” Ignis told him one evening, over a toast to a dinner he hadn’t been able to prepare for just the two of them in many years. They hadn’t been able to be just friends for far too long. They hadn’t been able to have a conversation that wasn’t about the state of affairs for even longer.

In spite of all the assurances, it was still hard to watch all of the estranged couples reuniting in the confetti-strewn streets from his rooftop retreat, high atop the Citadel where no one else was brave enough to go.

Noctis gulped down his envy like cough medicine, knowing it was better for him than it tasted. It had been harder to connect with Nyx in the last few weeks since the treaty was signed. Between all the shuffling around on both of their ends, catching the right time or a strong enough signal was growing harder and harder. Even this high up above the sightless knots of digital signals sent for miles within and without of Insomnia, for whatever reason, Nyx couldn’t text him back tonight.

_Brought in one of the big battalions from Cauthess! Maybe yours will be the next one._

_How are you doing?_

_Everything okay?_

_?_

Noctis exhaled, closing his eyes and casting his fears up and away from the celebrating streets beneath him. It wasn’t as if Nyx was in anymore danger. It wasn’t like he had to worry about ambushes and airships anymore. Still, he wouldn’t be at ease until Nyx was there, home, tucked back away with him in their not-so-secret place of sanctuary.

The apartment was their safe place. One where Noctis could run away from the public eye for at least a few hours each day. One where he could sleep at night without feeling the walls of the Citadel closing in. He’d kept it exactly as Nyx left it, with the exception of one absent fixture.

He saw Nyx everywhere that he used to be. In front of the tiny stovetop in the corner, filling the space to the brim with a number of hot spices that scalded the inside of Noct’s nose as they met the heat of the frying pan. Coming out of the bathroom, hot off of a fresh shower, hair undone and dripping beneath his towel. Right next to him in bed, warding off the sun from shining in his eyes in the morning by folding his whole body around Noct.

Soon.

Soon.

_Soon._

Everyone kept saying it would be soon. Noctis wasn’t sure what they’re definition of _soon_ was. Because _soon_ was feeling more and more like _forever._ He had a mind to just drive beyond the Wall himself – _soon_ , they wouldn’t need the Wall anymore; that couldn’t come quickly enough either. He wanted to march into whichever camp Nyx was stagnating in and pluck him from the ranks by hand.

When he heard the warpstrike, he almost thought he’d done it himself. He thought that he must have cast himself out across the city to begin the long trek across Lucis to get to him. But the Citadel was still standing steady beneath his feet when he opened his eyes. And he could smell electricity on the night winds.

“To answer all your texts, yes, and yes, and I’m here, little king.”

His voice, clean and clear as a bell without the distortion of a screen, cleaved into the back of Noct’s neck, and it felt like his head left his body so he could only feel his heart making sense of the sound. If he let his head do the thinking, he wouldn’t have turned around so fast. He would have missed those precious first seconds of his smile.

The shock of him bolted Noctis to the concrete. The details of his face were as sharp as crystal, unblemished by the miniscule segments which had separated them for so many years. The screens hadn’t done his eyes justice, the speakers couldn’t match the pitch of his voice. The artificial light had made his eyes ache, too late into the lonely nights of pretending Nyx was right there beside him.

Tonight, they ached for a different reason. Seeing him after so long was almost too much. The synapses of his sight faltered and stumbled over trying to make sense of the picture before him. But his hands were not delayed by any such doubt, though they shook with rabbit-nosed delicacy as they reached for him.

Nyx met him in the middle of the rooftop, his knees trembling as badly as Noct’s hands were. His breath bounced around in his chest like a sugar-high school-child, banging against his rib cage with joyous squeals and anxious flailing.

He had him… Right in front of him… _Where he could reach out and touch skin and know that he was warm and safe and real._

He was half afraid that he would touch him and his hand would pass right through him. But when his palm cupped the shape of his arm beneath the faded black fabric of his coat, he didn’t fall through. He felt his heat crash through his hand, then settle in his own veins, the warmth coming home to him as much as the man containing it.

He could feel his flesh, feel the solid, strong muscle as his grip grew surer. He felt it yield to him, unhurt, unbruised, not ruined into brittle bone from the ravage of the war. He felt it steadying his own body when his knees finally failed him. When his whole body buckled under a gasp and trusted that Nyx was really, truly there to catch him.

He could feel his own skin coming alive at each and every point where Nyx’s body connected to his own. He felt a thaw after a long winter, his whole world breathing into motion after years in a deep freeze.

He felt… _He felt._

He felt his heart drumming in his chest, he felt his blood racing in his ears. He felt his spirit sinking back into his body to fill out the empty skin that had hung off of him like loose paper for so damn long.

His voice hurt when he spoke. “You should have told me you were coming.”

Nyx’s voice was rough when he spoke back, his arms shaking around him like they still held the weight of the whole war. “I’m full of surprises, right? Didn’t want to go changing that after all this time.”

He didn’t want to talk about time. He didn’t want to remember how much of it had been wasted between them. He just wanted to snap himself to his chest and let the heat of his heart tear the chill straight out of him. He wanted to hear the distant cheers and trumpets that had kept Insomnia awake for weeks and think that it was all just for the two of them.

It hurt. Gods, it hurt to be held that tight after so long starving for his touch. Only his. His skin felt too tender, every shift of Nyx’s hands loosing little whimpers in his throat. All they did was touch. Over backs and arms and chests and faces, hands clumsily catching up to all the minute differences that time and toil had left them with. A scar there, a strand of hair here, the paradigm of their perfect symmetry sporting a few fault-lines, each one golden in Noct’s vision for how much stronger they would be for them.

They said nothing for a long time, just touching along the older lines of their faces. Just staring at the bright colors of their eyes, mesmerized by the clarity, the nearness, the tactile satiation to every cell of their skin.

Kissing was like magnetism. Two distant parts clicking together to make one whole. Forces could tear them apart, but they would always come together again. And they would always feel the same. Smooth as a lifting wave on the sea, as salty as the water with the splash of tears between them. Noct’s lips stung at the contact, bruised a little easier beneath the familiar coarseness that he loved about Nyx. He didn’t want the ache to stop. He wanted to feel the pain of this much happiness for as long as he lived under the painless peace of the world.

“Was it worth the wait?” Nyx gasped between them, with mussed hair and glassy eyes as he rolled his face along Noct’s just to feel him close.

Noctis held his hair between his fingers, the braids Nyx promised to share with him bound to his hands for as long as every flag flew free, and even if they fell.

“You’re always worth the wait, hero.”


End file.
